


Camelopard Dreams

by Lomonaaeren



Series: Wednesday One-Shots [21]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, Murder Mystery, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Spell Creation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-03
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-08-28 18:59:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8459224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: Ginny’s a consulting detective called in to investigate a series of strange deaths where the victims appear to have been clawed apart by some sort of wild beast. Unable to identify the beast’s tracks, Ginny goes to Luna for help—only to find Luna’s the next target.





	1. True Sight

**Author's Note:**

> The next in my series of Wednesday one-shots, for an anonymous request that asked for Ginny/Luna and Ginny investigating a case where Luna gets involved because of her expertise on magical creatures. This will probably be at least five or six parts.

****“Watch out, Madam Weasley.”

Ginny nodded to show she appreciated the warning, but she didn’t have to lift her robes out of the way of the spreading pool of blood. She had long since shortened her robes and slit them up the sides so she could move more easily. She strode into the front room of the manor house and glanced once around.

Once was enough to let her see the etched patterns of blood on the wall, and the enormous pawprints crushed into the carpet—well, half of them were pawprints, which was part of the problem—and the body sprawled on the floor as though the woman had been racing towards her wand. The wand was on the desk. The front of the desk, and the papers on it, were all covered with blood. Since Ginny had a reputation for figuring out things from undisturbed crimes, the Aurors hadn’t moved in yet to look through the papers and try to figure out if there was a clue there, but Ginny knew they were itching to.

Time to get to it, then.

Ginny touched her wand once to her eyes. “ _Aspectus verus_ ,” she whispered, and kept them closed for a count of three heartbeats. Then she opened them again.

The room was filled with softly moving shadows, shadows of past and future. The woman lunged for the desk, and yes, there was a beast behind her, something rising on its hind legs as it kicked and battered at her. Ginny could see, only for a moment, the spotted flanks, the way its mouth opened in a bellow, how its horned head turned—

And the vision vanished. But Ginny had seen one shadow in a corner, one that opened her mouth and lifted a hand as if to command the beast to stop. It was a woman with soft blond hair and a strange, distant expression in her blue eyes. Listening to music that wasn’t there, Ginny had once heard someone say.

“Madam Weasley? Did you find something?”

Ginny sighed and massaged her face for a moment. She was back in the real world now, the one moment of True Sight vanished from her eyes. She nodded and said, “Yes. I think there’s someone who will be here soon, someone important to the case.”

Polite skepticism from the Aurors behind her. Ginny had learned to identify it without even turning around .They accepted her past visions, but not the future ones. For now, she didn’t try to change it. She just moved carefully around the outside of the murder scene and located a pair of round prints near the woman’s body. She nodded. Hooves.

Hooves. _And_ paws.

And even though she didn’t recognize the beast, she knew she had seen only one, and not two working together. That was just another reason to involve the person she had seen standing here in the future.

“I’m going to contact Luna Lovegood,” said Ginny then, and heard the murmurs become ones of approval. They knew a magical creature had been here, if not _what_ it was any more than Ginny did, and they knew Luna studied them. So they would think it was a good idea whether they believed her visions or not.

Ginny looked back at the patch of wall she had seen Luna standing in front of, and shivered a little. The look in Luna’s eyes in that vision had been one Ginny had seen in them before, nothing all that unusual.

But the way she had had her hand raised…

It could have been to beckon something forwards. Or ward it off from her.

Swallowing back the queasiness that still assaulted her sometimes, Ginny left the room and let herself take a deep breath for the first time in twenty minutes.

*

“Ginny? Are you all right? You look as though you’ve seen—another body.”

Ginny smiled at her mother. She had been just sitting down in front of her fireplace to Floo Luna when her mother had Flooed _her_ instead. “That’s what it was, Mum. A bad one. Some kind of magical creature.” She wouldn’t go into more detail than that. Molly never wanted to know more. “So I’m contacting Luna. I hope she can help me research which one it is.”

“Oh,” said Molly, a little fretfully, and pulled at her hair. “I—wanted to know if you would come to dinner this weekend, Ginny.” She hesitated again, and then plunged forwards. “Harry’s going to be there, you know.” The horrible thing said, she leaned in to study Ginny’s reaction.

“That’s interesting, Mum. I have you have fun.”

“Ginny—”

“I’ll come to dinner if you don’t expect me to talk to Harry about dating, or make a promise to meet him somewhere, or talk about grandchildren,” Ginny interrupted. “I’m not _interested_ in having children, Mum. At least not right now. And not with Harry.” _Ever_ , she added silently.

“But _why_?”

As she had done on previous occasions, Ginny weighed the merits of telling her mother about the way she stared at other women, and the way she woke from dreams of long hair whispering across her face and breasts pressed against her own. But she didn’t know how to explain it in a quick conversation like this. She wanted it to be its own, separate subject, not an addendum to the old issue of having grandchildren for her mother.

“Why do you want more grandkids?” Ginny asked instead. “I mean, you have Bill and Fleur’s three, and George has Fred with another one on the way, and Percy’s wife is pregnant—”

“That’s not the same as you starting your family, Ginny,” Molly interrupted, her face eager. “To see my little girl with her own little girl or boy—of _course_ I want that! Every mother wants that!”

Ginny knew women who didn’t. Women who were happy to have grandchildren from only a few kids, or just one. Andromeda Tonks, for example. She was insanely happy to have Teddy, but that was partially because her own daughter was dead. Ginny knew her own mother would never have understood the choice to have just one child in the first place, instead of seven.

“I’m not interested,” Ginny said again.

“But everyone was looking forward to seeing you—”

“You can tell them hello for me.”

Molly gave a slight sigh. “We never see you anymore, Ginny. You’re always so busy working that job of yours.”

“And I’m happy to work it,” said Ginny firmly.

“But then you say things like how bad the blood is.” Molly leaned forwards and lowered her voice. “Have you seen the way Harry is growing up, Ginny? He won’t be available for much longer. I know he’s still interested because he always asks about you, but that doesn’t mean he won’t get snapped up by someone else. And he wants children. He might not be willing to wait as long as you need him to.”

“I’m never going to get back together with Harry, Mum.”

“But why _not_? You were so perfect for each other—”

“I have to go, Mum, if I want to try and catch Luna at home,” said Ginny firmly, and shut the Floo connection even though it was rude. But damn it, she didn’t want this to dwindle into yet another conversation about how she should have children. She was starting to understand why Charlie, who didn’t want to have them either, had moved to Romania the instant he had a chance.

_On the other hand, I don’t think Charlie dreams about men._

Ginny closed her eyes and spent a moment meditating to drive those unhelpful thoughts out of her head. She’d got good at that. It was the only way to sleep without nightmares after some of the things she’d seen.

Then she shook her head and cast some more Floo powder into the fire, and said, “Shadow Hall!”

For a moment, the flames swirled as if they didn’t want to connect her, and Ginny had to wince as she thought Luna might have gone on another of her expeditions hunting rare magical creatures, or gone out early to teach one of her classes. Then the flames cleared, and there was Luna’s green face, peering at her expectantly.

“I was just thinking of you, Ginny.”

“You were?” Ginny wondered for a second if she’d heard about the case and been expecting a Floo call, but being Luna, she got a serious nod and another explanation.

“You have so many ties to the Howling Wastelands. And they’ve been particularly active tonight. I was going to Floo you and see if you knew why so many winds are passing through our world from theirs.”

This was the first time Ginny had heard about the Howling Wastelands, although she’d heard about some of the others often enough to know how to respond. She just thought about it this time, trying to puzzle out a way to connect Luna’s riddles to reality, and then shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh.”

No one could look as profoundly disappointed as Luna. Ginny spoke before she could consider bringing it up diplomatically. “I think there’s a strange magical creature killing people. Could you come investigate it with me?”

Luna immediately sat up, and her focus sharpened so intently that Ginny felt a little pang of longing. But Luna only cared about magical creatures, and never recognized even a direct hint. So Ginny just answered her questions.

“How many people has it killed?”

“Just the one that we know of.”

“Was it accompanied by Wrackspurts?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“What kind of signs did it leave?”

Here, Ginny got to describe the spotted hide and horned head in the vision, and the odd mixture of pawprints and hoofprints on the floor. Luna sat up more and more, and didn’t interrupt, which was more than unusual. Ginny finished slowly, unsure whether she wanted to know what was behind that silence or not.

“I think I know what it is,” Luna whispered. “But I’ll summon the Nargles if I talk about it anywhere other than the house. Can you get me there?”

Ginny stared. She’d thought Luna would want to go tomorrow at the earliest, and she’d certainly let the Aurors do all the cleaning and repairing they wanted to. They’d have guards on the house by now, anyway, to make sure that thrill-seekers and Dark wizards wanting to collect “souvenirs” didn’t disturb it. “Now?”

“Of course now. Would I have asked now if I didn’t mean tonight?”

Ginny gave up on explaining some of the more delicate nuances of conversation to Luna, just as she had before, and simply nodded. “I know a way. Can you come through so I can Apparate us both?”

Luna didn’t even bother replying. The fire changed around the shape of her head, and Ginny barely had the opportunity to scramble out of the way before Luna was tumbling over the hearth and coming to her feet. Her hair blew around her as if in a wind that she was the only one to feel.

Then again, being the only one to feel a wind wasn’t special after she was the only one to see most of the things she talked about. Ginny nodded and stood up, holding out her hand. “Thank you, Luna.”

“Why would you need to thank me?”

Luna’s astonishment was complete and genuine. Ginny turned away to hide her smile, and said, “If you’ll come with me?”

They walked out to the Apparition point in front of the house. Luna was darting little looks at Ginny as she went. Ginny frowned. Most of the time, Luna was open about staring at people and pronouncing her thoughts on them. These sideways looks were a bad sign.

“Is something wrong?” Ginny finally asked, as she turned and held out an arm to her. They were in the middle of a small, shadowed street in Hogsmeade, and this late, everyone had their shutters or curtains closed.

“You’re troubled, and I wish there was some way I could help.”

Ginny lowered her eyes and swallowed. “Just a little argument with my family,” she said lightly. She didn’t like to specify it was with her mum, since Luna didn’t even have a mum to argue with anymore. “Thanks, though, Luna.”

“I know a draught I could—”

“Not unless you know one that could change her essential nature,” Ginny said harshly, and then winced. So much for keeping it secret that it was her mum.

“I know one like that, too. I’d make it for you.”

Luna was shorter than Ginny, but her stare was fierce and absolutely level. Ginny had to stare back. She hadn’t heard Luna threaten anyone since a case she’d hired her to consult on a few years ago, when an Auror had shoved Ginny out of the way with a boot in her arse and Luna had explained, with her wand to his throat, what kind of condition his body would appear in if that happened again.

_Both times, it was for me._

But that made far too much chaos open in her stomach for Ginny to endure right now, so she just gave Luna a strained smile and said, “Thanks,” and Apparated them while Luna still had her lips slightly parted as if she wanted to say something else.

The world blinked around them and righted itself. Ginny turned forwards.

Luna gave a sharp cry and pulled on her arm, tumbling her to the ground and, unfortunately, pinning her wand. That was the only warning Ginny had before yellow eyes glowed at her and something sailed overhead with a heavy snarl.

It landed on the other side of her, and Luna made a shrill sound.

Only the remembrance that she’d seen Luna standing inside the house, and so they had to survive this, let Ginny not panic when she turned around and saw Luna lying motionless on the ground, blood spreading dark around her in the starlight, outlining the pawprints of the creature as it bolted away down the street.


	2. Mingled With Blood

Ginny didn’t waste time chasing after the beast. Without Luna, she wouldn’t know how to capture or slow it down anyway.

And Luna was the most important. Whether she ever understood what Ginny had been hinting at all these years or not.

Ginny’s wand moved in twisting circles above the bloodied wound in Luna’s side, and, slowly, the crimson liquid rose in answer. This was a delicate spell, but Ginny had always been able to perform it. She chanted it long and slow, and the blood spiraled around her wand and formed into a glittering pole like a unicorn horn.

Ginny forced herself to ignore the way Luna held onto her wrist, with a slackening grip, as more and more blood was lost. This was the best way to heal her, and Ginny didn’t intend to succumb to panic. She gently slid the formed unicorn horn into Luna’s wound.

For a long moment, the magic stirred and foamed around Ginny’s wand as if reluctant to leave it. But Ginny thrust her will, hard, into it, and the unicorn horn changed into a blast of liquid that hit the sides of the wound and coated them like a bandage.

And it kept going, returning Luna’s blood to Luna’s body, giving back what the beast had stolen—as well as a little more. Ginny couldn’t push her own magic that deeply into the blood and not give up something of herself in return.

She only breathed, though, eyes fixed on the returning color in Luna’s face.

Luna gained enough strength to sit up, and Ginny supported her with one arm while she conjured a glass and filled it with the _Aguamenti_ Charm. Luna sipped slowly, her eyes serious, locked on the footprints made of her blood.

“This has changed things,” she said.

Ginny nodded. “Yeah, whoever sent this thing wanted to target you as well. Maybe he knew that you could help—”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that,” Luna said, glancing at Ginny and shaking her head. Her hair brushed Ginny’s knuckles, pale and feathery. Ginny hoped the breath she drew in wasn’t obvious. “I meant I can speak of the beast outside the house now. This incident has reversed the polarity of Saturn.”

Luna speaking like a centaur was always at her most incomprehensible, and Ginny didn’t bother asking for a translation. “Okay. What is it, then?”

“A camelopard.”

“A—something like a camel and a leopard?” Ginny was trying to remember if she’d ever heard that word or anything like it before, but no memories leaped out at her.

“Worse. Much worse.” Luna was solemn. “It’s something like a cow in the front—that part made the hoofprints—and a leopard behind. It’s not a natural creature. But it can _arise_ , if not be born.”

Ginny didn’t feel a hint of her usual impatience with that kind of statement, given that she knew she was lucky Luna wasn’t bleeding out in St. Mungo’s right now. “Do you mean certain circumstances come together, and a camelopard is born?”

“Not _born_. Never born. But yes. Like a storm comes together, or a sunset, or a Humdinger.”

Once again, Ginny could ignore part of that. She focused on the part that made sense. “Would someone have to call up these conditions, or would they just happen on their own, regardless of what someone wanted?”

Luna paused, and darted a look around at Ginny that was like a fish coming out of coral. “Very good,” she said, so soft and distant Ginny bent down to hear her, and felt Luna’s hair against her cheek again. “Yes. Someone could call the camelopard up. And until it dissolved, it would serve that person. Not without attracting Wrackspurts, of course.”

Ginny smiled at her. “Of course. What do you mean, dissolving?”

“Camelopards are such unstable creatures.” Luna struggled to stand, and although Ginny winced a little when she thought about the blood, she helped her up. Then she waved her wand to banish the blood from the cobblestones. “It comes of not existing the way people thought they should, you see. They were called giraffes, and sometimes people thought cattle and leopards bred to create them. Or cattle and hyenas. There are all sorts of legends.” Luna squinted at the house. “I still want to see it.”

“All right,” said Ginny. She had another question, though. “Could the person who called up the camelopard get it to attack a certain person?”

“Certainly. What would be the point, otherwise?”

Ginny hesitated, caught. “Well—I thought maybe someone would call up a camelopard just because they wanted to study it. Or maybe use it in the kind of study that would contravene the Experimental Breeding Ban.”

“Camelopards can’t breed. They think their children are the clouds, and then get upset when the clouds change. It’s very tragic.”

 _She can feel sympathy for the creature who nearly killed her,_ Ginny thought, as she steered Luna towards the house. _She’s so remarkable._

*

Remarkable or not, Luna’s eyes still widened when they stepped inside the house. Ginny followed her gaze and grimaced a little. Yes, the Aurors had cleaned the blood and taken away most of the objects that had received the stains, but they couldn’t get rid of the impressions in the carpet or the general sense that _something_ had happened here.

“How quickly did she die?” Luna whispered.

“The vision made it seem pretty instant.”

“That doesn’t mean it was.”

Ginny shrugged, feeling awkward when Luna only stood and stared at the crushed footprints in the carpet. “I only know what the vision tells me. It chose what it thought was the most important moment of time.”

Luna walked over to the desk without answering. She touched the edge of a drawer, and then knelt down in front of it. Ginny followed, although she doubted she would see whatever drew Luna’s attention. She usually didn’t.

Luna tapped her fingers several times on the wood, then paused, then tapped them again. By the time Ginny realized there was a distinctive rhythm there, Luna had already stopped and almost bolted across the room, heading straight for the place where Ginny had seen her in the vision.

Ginny swallowed and tightened her grip on the wand. She reminded herself that, even if the camelopard attacked again, she had managed to protect and heal Luna last time. And Luna _must_ be feeling better than she looked if she was moving around like this so soon after being gored.

Luna turned to face the desk, and raised her hand in the warding motion Ginny had seen in the vision. “Oh, no,” she whispered.

“What is it?” Ginny came up to stand beside Luna and looked at the desk.

And this time, she did see it, even before Luna could say something. There was a carving on the edge of the desk, so small and in such an odd place that it wasn’t visible to someone staring at the desk from any other angle. Besides, even if Ginny had had a notion such a thing was there, it probably would have been covered with blood before.

She was surprised the Aurors hadn’t seen it when they cleaned off the blood, though.

“They would have seen it and not known what it meant,” Luna murmured, answering her thoughts. “An odd carving and an odd fancy, they would have thought it.”

“And it’s not?” Ginny found herself keeping her voice low without thinking about it, her eyes tracing the carving. It was simple enough, a circle almost complete, with a small gap in the side where the lines that made it flowed out to join a cloud shape.

She remembered, then, Luna saying that camelopards thought their children were clouds. She caught her breath. “She _summoned_ it?”

“She arranged for it to happen,” Luna corrected. Her voice was deep with sadness, and she still hadn’t dropped her hand. Ginny realized now that she hadn’t been holding some predator away after all in the vision. She had been trying to prevent herself from looking at the carving. “That does not mean she meant to die.”

“I don’t think she did. She was reaching for her wand when it struck her down.”

Luna nodded, her eyes closed. “And now she has no control over it. Unless she was a necromancer?” She looked at Ginny inquiringly.

“If she had been, the Aurors would have found her books and shut down the house so tightly no one could get access to it.” Aurors didn’t mess around with necromancy, as Ginny had discovered when she got caught up in a particularly nasty case last year.

“Then there’s no chance of speaking to her until her spirit calms down,” Luna said, with a long sigh.

“Do you know why the camelopard attacked you?”

“It was sad and hurting. And the woman who died was blonde, wasn’t she?”

Ginny closed her eyes, trying to imagine the color of the hair she had seen under the endless drapes of blood. “I think so. It was a little—hard to tell.”

“Then it might have thought I was her. They’re not very smart, camelopards.” Luna sighed again. “Unfortunately, they also don’t like being deprived of prey, and they come back and stalk it until they catch it.”

“So you’re in danger until the case ends?”

“It seems so,” said Luna, with the kind of unconcern that drove Ginny absolutely mad. She concentrated on the carving again. “But I’ve never seen this kind of carving before. At least, not when it was used to arrange a camelopard. Some magizoologists just use it to represent camelopards in magical texts.”

“I’ll protect you.”

“Thank you.” Luna flashed her a smile. “I would hate to die before I find out what the carving means.”

 _And I hope that someday I can get through to you._ But Ginny restricted herself to giving Luna a small smile and asking, “Is there anything else you need to see here?”

Luna turned her head, her eyes wide and dreaming, focusing now and then on corners of the room as though she saw visions there like the ones Ginny could create with her True Sight spell. “No,” Luna murmured at last. “I thought there might be something to tell me _why_ she would have arranged for such a dangerous creature to happen, but…no.”

“What will happen to it once we keep it from reaching you?” Ginny asked, making sure she was slightly in front of Luna as she stepped out of the house. But nothing attacked them on the house, and Ginny relaxed and walked towards the Apparition point again.

Her hand rested lightly on Luna’s elbow. It was no more than an indulgence, she told herself. Especially since Luna didn’t object.

“It might seek out other prey.” Luna’s eyes were shut, her breathing even, as if she was trying to work herself into a meditative trance as she walked. “But because it manifested in a human house, I fear that it will seek out others, under the mistaken impression of comfort there.”

Ginny grimaced. “Wonderful. I don’t suppose there’s a way to track it?”

Luna glanced down as if she expected to see the camelopard’s bloody footprints in the street.

“Besides that,” Ginny said, and she must have sounded impatient and worried enough to attract Luna’s attention, because Luna stepped walking to look up at her. She reached out a hand a second later and rushed her fingers gently through Ginny’s hair.

“I will be fine,” she said. “A camelopard has hunted me, but there are many other things that have happened to me that are worse. My imprisonment during the war. My mother’s death. They have protected me.”

“Protected you?” Ginny blinked and tried to ignore the way her scalp tingled from the touch of Luna’s hand. “What do you mean?”

“They have kept me from feeling fear, because nothing else is going to be as bad as them,” Luna said simply. “I couldn’t witness my own death in the same way I witnessed my mother’s, and being killed by a camelopard is quicker than imprisonment.”

She turned and held out her arm for Ginny to Apparate them. Ginny swallowed and took her hand.

*

Ginny lay in bed that night, and breathed softly. As long as she lay absolutely motionless—sometimes pretending that one of her arms had turned completely to stone, so that she couldn’t move it even if she wanted to—she could sort through the emotions and thoughts bubbling to the top of her mind.

She would have to hunt for the camelopard with Luna’s help.

That help would put Luna in even more danger than she was currently.

But no one else had any idea about them, or where the beast would strike next, or what would happen if the woman who had died _had_ caused it to manifest deliberately. Ginny would need Luna’s help even to explain the legal issues to the Aurors correctly. She needed so much help…

This time, Ginny had to count backwards from one hundred, reaching almost fifty before the tension that had slipped into her limbs let her relax again.

_No. I’m not the one putting Luna in danger. My vision said she was going to be there anyway. And she was there._

“I just wish I wasn’t as attracted to her as I am,” Ginny whispered, her eyes falling shut again and closing out the dim outlines of the chair to the side of her bed, and the small table where her lamp sat.

There. It was said. Ginny had known it for a long time, since the habit she had of stealing glances at Luna had helped her realize that she never looked at Harry the same way, but she had never spoken the words.

_I thought maybe they wouldn’t be true if I kept them silent. And now I sound like I’m parroting Mum._

Ginny closed her eyes more tightly and concentrated on the sensation of keeping her arms still. She wouldn’t be alone. The Aurors would also want to know how to contain the camelopard, and they would join her in protecting Luna. Ginny had already sent an owl explaining what had happened tonight and what they’d discovered.

It might not be enough. But on the other hand, the world was full of _mights_. Charlie might get killed by a dragon tomorrow. George might snap out of his grief and act more like the man he had once been. Mum might decide she had enough grandchildren and stop bothering Ginny to provide her with more.

That thought made a burst of quivering laughter move through Ginny’s chest. No, she really didn’t believe that. It was impossible to make herself believe it even when she tried her hardest.

 _Ah, well,_ she thought, comfortably, and was at last able to sleep, in the wake of her cheer.


	3. Dusk

“Ginny! Ginny, I know you’re there! Come on!”

Ginny groaned and tried to wrap her arms around her ears. She was going to a meeting with the Aurors about the camelopard killing, and later Luna, but not until noon. One quick glance at the clock she had hanging on the wall showed her it was a minute shy of eight in the morning. Why was someone Flooing her _now_?

“Ginny!”

 _Not just someone. It’s Mum._ Old habit got Ginny out of bed and made her smooth down her hair with a charm even though she’d been sleeping alone (and Molly would probably be thrilled if she thought Ginny _was_ sleeping with someone else, anyway). Maybe something had happened to Charlie or George. Or even Dad, who was supposed to be going on a raid to recover Dark artifacts today.

“What is it? Is someone hurt?” she asked, as she ran into the drawing room where her fire was.

She stopped when she saw her mother’s coy smile and the face that hovered beside her in the flames. Stopped and groaned before she could arrest it, and watched as Harry’s welcoming smile turned down at the corners.

 _Harry isn’t stupid,_ Ginny thought, wearily, and for the four hundredth time in the last four years. _He must know I don’t fancy him anymore. I don’t know why he never tells Mum no._

“No, of course not!” Mum laughed and winked at her, then glanced at Harry. “Harry just had the most wonderful idea. He thought he’d take you out for a breakfast near the Hogwarts lake, and then you could go to Diagon Alley. Just the _two_ of you,” she added, as if Ginny could possibly have missed the emphasis.

And then she _winked_.

 _Oh my God._ Ginny’s first thought was how glad she was that Luna wasn’t here to see this. Then she wished Luna was, because she wouldn’t understand anyway and would probably remark on the dust caught in Molly’s eye, and then Ginny would have something to laugh at instead of stand there with a squirming stomach about.

“Ginny?” Harry’s voice was husky and uncertain, and Ginny stared at him. If only his hair had been longer, if his voice had been huskier still, if he had long fingernails and breasts and made her laugh…

_If he was a girl, I could at least pretend._

“I have meetings with the Aurors and Luna today,” Ginny said abruptly, knowing she had already lingered too long. “I can’t go. Sorry.”

“But Harry came especially to take you out,” said Molly, and then glanced at Harry and put a hand over her mouth as if she had blurted out a secret. “I’ll let him talk to you,” she concluded hastily, and disappeared from the fire before Ginny could do more than open her mouth in protest.

Left “alone” with Harry, Ginny looked at him glumly. He was smiling again, but it was so small that she knew he didn’t have much hope.

“Listen,” said Ginny. She wanted to tell him the truth, but on the other hand, she had no guarantee that her mum wasn’t listening somewhere just out of sight. “I don’t want to go on any more outings with you, Harry. Please.”

“Your mum thinks we’re perfect for each other.”

“And what do _you_ think?”

He hesitated, and Ginny pressed her advantage the way she would in a duel. “I want to know what Harry Potter thinks. Not what his fans do, or what the Boy-Who-Lived does, or even what my mother does. Do you _really_ want to date me?”

Harry looked at her steadily. For an instant, Ginny thought there was hope. His eyes seemed to soften, and she thought he was looking at reality, maybe at the past few years when they’d drifted apart from each other.

But then Harry firmed his lips and said, “You’re the only girl for me, Ginny. Maybe other people thought of it first, but I’m thinking of it now.”

 _He’s probably just too afraid to lose the rest of us the way he thinks he would if he lost me_ , Ginny thought, and hardened her heart. Her days of dating someone out of pity were long past. And how sad was it that Harry, handsome and brave in so many other things, thought he was reduced to dating his best friend’s little sister?

“The answer’s no. I already have plans for the day.”

“We could just have a breakfast and walk through Diagon Alley right after—”

Ginny hid a smirk at the thought force-marching him through Diagon Alley just because her mum wanted her to, but it died at the look on Harry’s face. She shook her head, and thought of Luna talking about camelopards and how they thought their children were the clouds. Ginny would have wanted that even if Harry was a woman.

Luna would probably never understand the way she came first with Ginny, because she never did. But Ginny could still honor that dream of happiness the way Harry wasn’t honoring his.

“No, I have other plans. I have a career. And I know you’re in Auror training, Harry.” Ginny let her voice soften. “Don’t you have plans for a Thursday morning, too?”

Harry hesitated. Then he threw his chest out a little, or at least Ginny thought he did, as far as she could tell from him being crouched in front of the fireplace. “I do. But I told Ron and the others that I wanted to court someone, and, well, they agreed.”

 _Ron only agreed because he knows it’s me._ Ron and Hermione were as enthusiastic about her and Harry as Molly was.

Ginny was tired of it all. Once, she had thought Hermione would figure her out because she was so perceptive. Once, she had thought Ron would know there was a serious reason she wasn’t dating Harry because they had grown up together and been close, like it or not.

She still would have to tell all of them she preferred women. But she would do it on her own time, not be forced into it.

“I don’t want to, Harry.” He opened his mouth, and she added, “Find someone else to date,” and shut the Floo.

Then, even though she wanted to pace the floor and brood and ask the walls why her luck was this way when she hadn’t done anything too bad in her life, Ginny went back to sleep. And if she did dream of Luna and wake wet between the legs, that wasn’t yet anyone’s business but her own.

*

“I’m glad you’re here, Ginny.”

Ginny paused and blinked when she saw Luna striding across the meeting room to greet her. Like all the rooms in the Ministry that could be used for any kind of meeting—the Minister might welcome foreign diplomats here one day and the Aurors might interrogate a prisoner the next—this was bare and drab, with a fireplace to order food on one side and a table in the middle. It was up to the people in it to decorate it with illusions or banners or the like to give the impression they wanted.

Luna was the brightest thing in it. Ginny reached out and took her hand, even though she felt it was unreal.

“I thought I was seeing you this afternoon.”

“The Aurors invited me when they knew I’d been attacked.” Luna eased up beside Ginny, along the same wall, so that they stood more shoulder-to-shoulder than Ginny would have dreamed of moving. “And because they found out I was coming anyway.”

“You were coming anyway?” Ginny murmured, and worked to keep her lips from trembling.

“Of course I was,” said Luna, and gave her a confused glance. “Why wouldn’t I be? They were going to talk to you about the case. I have to be there.”

Ginny sighed and nodded. “Of course.” She should have known Luna wanted to be here for the camelopard and maybe the woman who was killed, and not because of Ginny.

“What was her name?” Luna asked, walking over to the table and sitting down. She glanced in several directions as if waiting for someone to appear and ask her what she would like to eat. Then she sniffed and drew her wand. In a second, banners of a bright sunflower-yellow draped the walls.

Ginny reached up and felt one. Her fingers passed straight through. It was only an illusion.

“The woman who was killed?” Ginny shook her head and sat down beside Luna, feeling absurdly more cheerful even with what Luna had said. The banners really did shine as if they were sunlit. “They didn’t tell me. The Aurors called me in, and then they sent me home and took over the house. And the next time I talked to someone was, well, my mum, and then you.”

“Hmmm.” Luna slid lower in her seat, watching the fireplace with a frown, as if she thought someone was more likely to Floo in than walk through the door. “I think they’re keeping her name secret for a reason.”

“What reason?” This was Luna, who thought the Ministry was prey to the Rotfang Conspiracy, Ginny reminded herself a second later. She didn’t _necessarily_ have a good idea that would stand up to scrutiny.

“I think the letters in her name would tell us something about why she summoned a camelopard. And the Ministry has always been threatened by name-readers.”

Ginny only hummed, a fond smile on her face. The good thing about the fact that Luna never took a hint—even when Ginny had practically shouted in her face—was that this way, Ginny could get away with being charmed and amused by her, and Luna would never suspect her.

“Ginny? Are you listening to me?”

“Of course. What about name-readers?”

Luna gave her a long, esoteric lecture on how important it was to be able to manipulate the letters in someone’s name. If Ginny had been able to listen and retain as much as Luna wanted her to, she would probably be an expert.

But Luna hadn’t even reached the part where it was dangerous and the Ministry would want to prevent it when the door opened and several Aurors entered the room. Ginny stood up before she thought about it.

The Aurors carried a body between them. It was a woman—a different woman from the one attacked last night, Ginny realized, though also blonde—in a Stasis Charm. She was draped over what looked like a board, and which couldn’t be very comfortable. Ginny winced and moved around the edge of the table.

There was a deep, bloody wound in her side, like the one that Ginny had healed on Luna. Not hooves, but it might have been caused by horns.

“Another one?” Ginny asked, stepping forwards. Luna seemed frozen beside her, and for all she knew about magical creatures, Ginny thought suddenly, she would have seen very few casualties.

“Not a murder, thank Merlin,” said the Auror leading the way, a tall man with shaggy brown hair and tired eyes whom Ginny had first met years ago. His name was Kellen Wood. “We saved her from bleeding out. But now that we know who she is…”

“Who is she?” asked Luna.

“Who was the first woman?” Ginny asked, her mind skipping past several unlikely suppositions to fasten on the most likely one: that this living woman was connected to the dead one.

Wood inclined his head. “They both go by the name of Pallas. This woman calls herself Isola Pallas, and the one who died, well, she was Isabella Pallas. But when ‘Isabella’ died, some of the spells she’d worked to change her facial features and hair ended. She was really dark-haired, a pure-blood instead of the half-blood she presented herself as, older than she looked…”

Ginny cut him off. Wood had made his name looking into the minutiae of cases, which was fascinating for him, but not always for his audience. “Her name?”

“Her true name was Rosa Lestrange.”

Ginny hissed in spite of herself. After the year she’d spent at Hogwarts with Neville, she could never think of the Lestranges neutrally again. “I understand why she went into hiding. But surely she wasn’t a sister of—”

“No, the whole main family line died out,” said Wood, his own mouth tightening. He’d lost people in the war, too. “She was the daughter of a minor branch.” He glanced at the woman under the Stasis Charm, whose lips were slightly parted. “This is Romula Lestrange, not actually a sister, but a cousin.”

Ginny nodded tightly. “How did you know she was dying in time enough to save her?”

“Coincidence, mainly.” Wood moved out of the way so the other Aurors carrying the board could put it down on the table. His face still had that indefinable tightness as he watched them. “Someone found a list of Floo addresses in Rosa Lestrange’s effects. They thought to contact the woman who was supposedly her sister, to find out what she knew and inform her of the death. He got no answer, but a strange message instead of just finding out the Floo was closed that made him suspicious. He took a team of Aurors and went to her house, and, well, we found her.” Wood nodded to Romula. “She must be wearing some powerful Dark artifact that healed her enough for her to survive. She’d been bleeding for hours by the time we found her.”

Ginny moved slowly around Romula’s outstretched body. Her hands dangled, and she wasn’t even breathing because of the Stasis Charm. Still, Ginny had spells that would let her sense certain things without disrupting the charm.

She turned to Wood. “Do I have your permission to perform that one spell the Minister hates?”

Wood hesitated. “Weasley.”

“Just this once.” Ginny lowered her voice coaxingly. The other Aurors were ones who worked with Wood all the time, and the minute she’d made her request, they’d started speculating loudly about possible Dark artifacts that could save lives, so they were no longer “listening.” “You know I haven’t done it since last year.”

Wood gnawed his lip. Then he nodded and turned away to join in the conversation, raising his own voice louder than all the others.

“What spell don’t they like you doing?”

Ginny jumped. She’d almost forgotten about Luna, who’d come forwards and was staring at Romula as though she could make out every mark of the horns that had gored her. “A variant of the True Sight spell,” she said. “But it only takes me back into the past, not the future. It makes me see whatever a victim’s greatest cause of pain was in the last week.”

Luna blinked slowly. “Why wouldn’t they like you using it?”

“Because it doesn’t always reveal the face of a murderer,” Ginny said bitterly, thinking about the ugly secrets dragged to light last year. “Sometimes the victim died painlessly, and we find out this way that their husband was abusing them or something. Or a relative of the Minister tried to kill them even though he didn’t actually succeed.”

“But it’s important to know these things.”

Ginny smiled quickly at her, loving the way Luna stood outside all politics. “Of course it is. But also embarrassing sometimes.”

“What does that matter?”

 _Luna probably has no idea what embarrassment even is,_ Ginny decided fondly as she raised her wand and cast the spell. “ _Dolor verus tuus._ ”

There was a moment of intense vertigo when Ginny felt the world dance around her, assuming swirling colors of green and grey. She had time to draw in her breath for one warning to Luna before the pain grabbed her, and she saw—

The looming shape of a camelopard, and this time, a human figure behind it—

And something lashed her in the side so hard she screamed, and collapsed to the floor, without even the foresight to cast a Cushioning Charm.

She found out later that Luna’s hands were the ones that had kept her head from merciless impact with the floor.


	4. Wake to Visions

“You should not have used that spell.”

Ginny swam out of darkness, only to immediately turn to the side and vomit. There was little in her stomach, which made the whole situation rather pathetic, she thought. Of course this would happen the first time she used the spell in a year and it actually told her useful information.

And it wasn’t even the gore in the vision that had upset her stomach. It was the sheer stress of the magic. She hadn’t realized how much her body had become accustomed to _not_ using that particular spell.

“You should not have used that spell.”

About to make a rude gesture to tell Auror Wood exactly what she thought of his opinion, Ginny paused. That honestly didn’t sound like his voice. She rolled a little to the side and opened her eyes slowly.

Luna stood over her, hands under her head. Ginny rapidly deduced she was on an expanded table beside the body of Romula Lestrange. She stared at the exposed wound under the Stasis Charm and shivered. It was worse now that she had felt Lestrange’s pain as the camelopard literally tore into her.

“You should _not_ have used that spell.”

Yes, it was Luna. Ginny looked up at her and shook her head in wonder, trying not to revel in how the back of her hair felt against Luna’s fingers. “But why? You said I should use it, that it was important to know the truth.”

“It hurt you.”

“Well, I knew it was going to hurt me. I mean, I feel someone else’s pain. I just didn’t expect the upset stomach I got.”

“It was not a good idea, not if it hurt you. I did not understand, not clearly.”

Ginny reached out to squeeze Luna’s hand. She sounded hard and determined and distraught in a way Ginny had never heard, except for once when a Kneazle kitten she’d been taking care of had got trampled by a unicorn she was also caring for. “I’m sorry, Luna. But I’m okay now, and I do have answers.”

“What are they?”

Ginny started. Even if she _felt_ alone with Luna as they talked to each other, it clearly wasn’t true. She made some effort to compose her face and sit up to look at Auror Wood. Luna continued cradling the back of her head all the way up and kept on doing it once she was steady and upright, too. Ginny coughed to cover her embarrassment and pleasure.

“It was definitely the camelopard. And there was someone with it. A human figure.”

“From what Miss Lovegood told us while you were…busy, I thought that was impossible. That the camelopard would attack wildly and on its own now that its summoner is dead.”

“Its arranger,” said Luna, in the patient voice of someone not used to being heard.

“Call it what you will. Did the person seem to be directing the angle of its attack?”

Ginny shook her head. “I couldn’t see it well enough to make that out. I couldn’t even fully see the face.” She added hastily as Auror Wood frowned at her, “But it was still worth performing the spell, because I _could_ tell that it wasn’t someone trying to run away. It was just someone standing behind the camelopard. Waiting.”

“Waiting?” Wood asked with doubt in his voice, but a moment later he grasped what she meant. “Not running away.”

“Not afraid.”

“It wasn’t worth performing the spell if it hurt you.”

Wood only nodded, but not in response to Luna’s words. Ginny was kind of glad of that, because she didn’t have any idea what to say, either. “That’s something, at any rate. It would suggest that we either have a visitor or witness who somehow knew about the camelopard before it attacked, or someone who came into Lestrange’s house specifically to unleash it.”

“And it’s not likely to be the former.”

“Indeed. I’ll tell you if we need your help again, Weasley. The risks you’ve taken are enough for now.”

Ginny opened her mouth to ask whether they weren’t going to talk to Luna, but then closed it as Wood spun away and began to bark orders at the other Aurors, who scurried like ants in response. Of course, from the things Wood had already said, they’d spoken with her while Ginny was…busy.

No one seemed to be paying attention to her at the moment, and it was rather creepy to remain beside Romula Lestrange’s body. Ginny started to test her limbs. She was sure she could stand, if—

“Stay still.”

Ginny paused, realizing Luna’s hands still hadn’t moved from the back of her head. “I’m all right now, Luna.”

“You should stay still,” Luna whispered, and then moved around in front of Ginny. Her eyes were so deep and devastated that Ginny reached out a hand. Luna took it and stared at it as if she was about to start palm-reading like Trelawney. “I never knew the spells you invented could hurt you as deeply as that.”

“Well, they don’t always,” Ginny said, thinking of what had happened last year. “Sometimes they hurt other people.”

“Like me.”

Ginny blinked, and felt as if she had too many shadows on her face, too much depth in her lungs. “What do you mean? Did I—did I hit you when I fell?”

“I caught you.” Luna studied their hands for a moment, and then lifted her head. Her face was pale and shining. “Don’t cast that spell again. Tell me before you cast any of the others that you know.”

She squeezed Ginny’s hands once, and released them.

Ginny swallowed a little. There were things she wanted to say, but not in a room crowded with Aurors. And it might be that Luna didn’t mean this the way Ginny thought she did, either. She hadn’t responded when Ginny made far more openly flirtatious remarks.

_Then again, would Luna even recognize the way that other people flirt? Maybe I should have been trying to learn her way of flirting all along._

Ginny didn’t get the chance to think about it further then, because Wood stepped back from the other Aurors and nodded to her. “They found something at Rosa Lestrange’s home that they think you ought to see.”

*

Ginny was glad Luna had come with her, because she had no idea what she was looking at. It seemed to be a piece of golden fur, but the longer Ginny touched it, the more it felt like a woven mat of some kind. She finally shook her head and handed it to Luna, who gazed it for only a second before announcing, “It’s a piece of scalp.”

Ginny jerked back in instinctive disgust, but then remembered the way Rosa had summoned the camelopard—or arranged it, as Luan would say. It needn’t be a _human_ scalp, after all. She tried to lean nearer and look interested.

“It’s a human scalp,” said Luna, with a faint frown at Ginny, as if she had guessed what Ginny was thinking and didn’t like it for some reason.

“How closely did we check her books for necromantic ones?” demanded the Auror apparently in charge of this stage of the investigation, a tall woman named Hero Lombardis. She had no-nonsense eyes and a long fall of braided dark blond hair that ended somewhere around her knees. Ginny liked her. “Human body parts are a common tool in a necromancer’s arsenal, of course—”

“This one was used in a different way.”

Ginny turned to Luna. She was the only one who paid her that much attention, though. Auror Lombardis was frowning in a way that probably meant she would go charging off in another direction at the slightest suggestion, and the other Aurors were still chattering in the back of the crowded little evidence room, some of them out of sight behind shelves.

“What do you mean, a different way?” Auror Lombardis asked.

“It was used to make something,” Luna said, and she looked up. There was something hard and heated and cloudy in her gaze, something Ginny wanted to instinctively shy away from. “It was used for a horrible purpose.”

“Do you know what it was?”

“Yes.”

Auror Lombardis drew her breath in as if to shout, but Ginny rested a hand on Luna’s and asked quietly, “Can you tell us?”

Luna turned to her. “Camelopards are innocent. It isn’t the camelopard’s fault.”

“I know that, from what you said. I would never think it was the fault of a magical creature who was used and turned against humans.”

Maybe Luna was remembering some of the other cases they had worked on together, where Ginny had always recommended that the magical creature be treated fairly and relocated to a reserve if possible. She nodded. “I think this is a last remnant of the human whom Rosa Lestrange transformed into a camelopard.”

“But I thought you said that couldn’t happen,” Ginny breathed in horror, even as her mind raced. Her visions didn’t always tell the straight truth. The way they hadn’t told her that Luna was reaching out her hand in that house to break a vision, not to ward off a physical danger.

Maybe the vision she had had of the attack on Romula didn’t mean someone had been there directing the camelopard in its attack. Maybe it meant that there was a human in the past, _behind_ the camelopard.

Ginny wished more than ever that she could have seen the figure’s face.

“I think the Lestranges accomplished a great deal they would never have wished for anyone to know,” Luna said, and bowed her head forwards. “Including, perhaps, a way to transform a human into a camelopard.”

Ginny said nothing. She was wondering whether they would have to look through missing persons cases to find someone the Lestranges could have taken captive and turned into their monster.

“Do you think the camelopard still knows?” she asked. “Is that the reason why it attacked Lestrange and her sister?” Auror Lombardis was listening, she saw, but with a sharp frown between her brows that worried Ginny. She didn’t know if the Auror was taking this in or not.

“I think the camelopard knows something,” said Luna. Her voice was still low; she still looked at her hands, not up at Ginny. “But not enough. It attacked me, when I had nothing to do with the transformation.”

“And let’s grant that this whole thing is true,” Auror Lombardis interrupted, seemingly unable to stay silent now. “Why go and attack the other Lestrange sister? We couldn’t find any evidence of recent contact between them.”

“They would have needed years to plan this,” said Luna, in a voice just enough like her usual dreamy one to make Ginny feel achingly sad. “They would have needed to trade books and contact experts and hunt for rare ingredients.”

“You know how they did it?” Ginny asked her quietly.

Luna ran her fingers over the section of scalp as if she was calling up the memories locked inside it. “I know, based on this, how they must have done it. Not the details. That it would have taken more than one person, and a long time.”

Ginny nodded. She wished she could understand all the complexities of mourning in Luna’s face, and how to make her feel better. She didn’t even know for certain if Luna was saddest about the transformation, or that a magical creature wasn’t actually a creature but a tormented human, or that a camelopard was still out there, running around, hideous and lurching and prone to strike anywhere next.

_They don’t give up prey once they have it, she said. It must have thought Romula Lestrange was dead, or she wouldn’t still be alive. It’ll come back and attack Luna again._

Ginny moved in front of Luna and took her hand. Luna looked up and shook her head a little. “I don’t need to be shielded from the Aurors.”

“I know. But I want to protect you from _everything_.”

Luna’s sadness dropped away as if it was a mask that she’d pulled on, and she let go of the bit of scalp. She reached out with a hand so light that Ginny didn’t feel when her fingertips rested on her forehead; she saw them, instead. She blinked, and Luna’s fingers slid down a little, and she gave a shaky laugh.

Before she could say anything, Auror Lombardis demanded, “And what should we do now? Can we come up with some plan to cage this camelopard or destroy it?”

No matter that she did like this particular Auror, Ginny wished at the moment that she was somewhere far away and under a Silencing Charm. Luna’s hand faltered, and she turned a blanking gaze on the rest of the room.

“Kill it? It was a human being.”

“It’s not now. We have to think about ways to protect the people who are still _people_.”

“But it is a creature. It deserves to be treated well.”

“You said they dissolve into magic all the time anyway. I don’t see why we should have to worry that much about preserving its life.”

Luna looked so distressed that Ginny moved in front of her. “Why don’t we talk about this later?” she asked, only looking at Auror Lombardis, so the woman would feel more compelled to look at her in turn. “We can come up with a plan for when we actually locate the camelopard.”

Auror Lombardis paused, then inclined her head. “In the meantime, I am going to look into this more closely and see who Rosa Lestrange knew, who might have been sacrificed.” She spun away to yell at her Aurors much the way Wood had.

Ginny didn’t have time to sigh in relief before Luna’s hand closed on her shoulder. She didn’t let Ginny turn around, but bent down and sighed into her ear, “I think you and I both have some things we should discuss.”

And damn if _that_ didn’t start Ginny’s heart dancing like a drumstick. But she nodded. “Of course.”


	5. Privacy

 

“You have a lot of spells that you’ve invented.”

Ginny cupped her hands around the mug of hot chocolate—with so much cream added to it that Ginny thought she should probably call it “creamolate” instead—and nodded. Luna was sitting across from Ginny at her table. She’d brought Ginny to her house, something Ginny hadn’t expected. There were lots of places in the Ministry where they could have spoken.

 _All right,_ Ginny had to concede when Luna’s eyes came back to her and practically blazed. _So not a lot that would be as private as this._ And if Luna wanted to say half the things Ginny _suspected_ she wanted to say…

Ginny drank some of the chocolate so fast that she burned her lips and had to set down the mug, coughing.

“You have a lot of spells.”

“Yes,” Ginny said, finally figuring out that Luna wanted her to speak. Sometimes it was hard to tell. They communicated enough with nods and pointing hands and remarks that Luna gave and Ginny didn’t really bother to answer because how could she? But then Luna would demand words. Real ones.

 _Hard ones_.

“I think you need to think about how you use them.”

“I use them to help solve cases,” Ginny said, a bit bewildered now. Luna knew that. She’d worked a lot of those cases with Ginny.

“But they magically exhaust you. And they give you Writhing Snakes in the stomach.”

Ginny ignored the part she couldn’t understand, as usual, for something she could. “They do,” she said. “But that’s part of the job. And this one was a lot worse than usual because I hadn’t cast it in so long. The solution is actually to use them more often, so I get used to the toll they take on my magic.”

Luna’s hands closed around her mug so hard that Ginny was surprised a crack didn’t appear in the side. “What about the toll they take on me?”

“What do you mean? If you mean that you had to catch me when I fell, that doesn’t happen most of the time—”

Luna set her mug down and stood up, walking unhurriedly towards the door of the kitchen. Ginny stood up, not sure what was so much worse about this argument than so many others, but ready to try and make it up to her. “Luna! I only meant—”

Then she realized Luna was only walking around the table. It was such a big table that it had _looked_ like she was moving towards the door. And she put her hands on Ginny’s shoulders and didn’t even give her a significant stare in the eye before she leaned forwards and kissed her.

Ginny gaped, and Luna’s tongue went promptly and busily where it was wanted. Ginny barely managed to set down the mug she was still holding and reach forwards to grab Luna’s hair. Merlin, she was faint.

Luna walked her backwards until Ginny touched the wall near the table. Then she raked her hand down Ginny’s shoulder, and back up, and into _her_ hair, and lapped so hard at Ginny’s teeth that Ginny nearly choked.

It was such a Luna way to kiss, and it was so wonderful.

“Now that I have your attention,” Luna said, and pulled back and looked Ginny in the eye exactly as if they were merely continuing their conversation, “ _that’s_ why it’s hard on me when you cast spells like that and then slump towards the floor.”

Ginny nodded, flushed and kiss-swollen and not really sure what she’d expected. Then she turned towards the table. Luna guided her over to it, watching her all the time with narrow eyes as if she thought Ginny would faint again.

_Well, I wanted her real attention. This is…intense, but real._

"Do we understand each other?" Luna asked, and her hair slid along her shoulder as she sat down in the chair beside Ginny, instead of across the table. For some reason, that made prickles break out along Ginny's skin as if Luna was climbing out of pyjamas. She swallowed and nodded, eyes resting on Luna for a further moment before she jerked them away.

"Good. Then tell me if you're going to use them again on this case."

Ginny winced. _From butterflies back to Writhing Snakes again._ "I don't know. If you're right that they created the camelopard from a human, then we need to figure out who that human is. My spells might be the only way."

"Let the Aurors investigate."

"Well, I will," said Ginny, a little startled, not only by the way Luna was still looking at her but the hardness in her voice. "I'll just be working on it at the same time. And sometimes, my spells provide the only source of _certainty_."

"That doesn't mean you have to do them."

"But if we want to know who the human is that Rosa and Romula sacrificed--"

"The Aurors can find it. The Aurors are _trained_ to find it. Why do you think your spells provide the only source anyone can trust?"

That was so similar in wording and tone to some of the complaints that the Aurors had made about her down the years, Ginny was momentarily angry. Then she managed to harden her will and say, "It's always better to have more people working on a case, at least if you can spare them. I don't know how many Aurors can be spared on this case."

" _I_ can't spare _you_."

Ginny felt as though someone had picked her up and shaken her out like a cloth. She sat still, because there was no other way to sit, and said nothing, because there was nothing else to say.

Luna reached out and casually smoothed her way down Ginny's cheek as if she was a sculptor tracing the outlines of a statue she intended to make. "I think you know what I mean."

"It's nothing I ever expected to hear."

"Then you must be _deaf_."

And on the word, Luna moved forwards so decisively that Ginny nearly toppled from her chair. She had Luna wrapped around her, kissing her so hard that her tongue hurt. Ginny clasped Luna's neck, her hair, her hands, shivering. Luna was here, and not turning away, and not misunderstanding her.

"I'm not a Hunort," said Luna gently, into Ginny's collarbone. "I'm not going to disappear because you stop believing in me."

Ginny had never heard of a Hunort, but she gratefully let Luna go and flexed her fingers a little. "I--I never expected that you would be like this," she whispered, and reached out to cradle Luna's chin. "I wanted it for so long."

"You can have it. And do you know how long _I_ wanted it?" Luna's fingers slid up into Ginny's hair, down to circle around her throat like a necklace or a collar. "I thought you were ignoring me because you didn't want to embarrass me."

"I wanted you, too!" Ginny complained as Luna gently pushed her into a chair.

"You never showed it."

Ginny nearly moaned at the unfairness of that argument, and the way Luna pulled back from her to get the other chair, taking herself out of reach. "Of course I did! The way I touched you, how much I wanted to protect you from the camelopard, and sometimes I outright asked you if you were dating someone."

"But you did it when we were waiting outside for dandelion sprites. Of course I can't answer a question like that when dandelion sprites are around. Do you know how much _teasing_ I would be subjected to?"

Ginny sighed and leaned back so that the back of her chair supported her in place of Luna's hands. She kept her narrow, lazy eyes on Luna and the way she bent down as if she would lift Ginny again. "I don't know much about dandelion sprites."

"But you'll learn about _me_."

God, Ginny shuddered from how wet the sound made her. "Of course I would," she said, and held out her hand. "But why don't you come here so I can show you how much I already know?"

Luna gave her a lazy smile that would have made Ginny tackle her a long time ago if she had seen it before. And then she reached out and pulled her fingers through her hair, smoothing it down and out, making Ginny stare at how absolutely blond and straight it was.

“Do you like my hair?” Luna whispered.

“It’s wonderful.”

Appearing satisfied with that answer, Luna crossed the distance between them and swung her leg across Ginny’s lap. Ginny leaned in and kissed her throat. Luna sighed and tilted her head back. “You know I like to be kissed there.”

Ginny kept her lips in place, but slid her right hand beneath Luna’s breast and carefully lifted it up, moving her fingers back and forth and up until she found Luna’s nipple. Luna lurched forwards and almost off her lap. She sighed out, then held her breath, then sighed out again, in a rhythm as regular as the sea.

“And you know I l-like to be touched there.”

Her words were still too coherent for Ginny’s taste. She kissed at the same time as she rubbed, and Luna bucked and lifted her hands to clasp Ginny’s wrist.

“You know—you know—”

 _At least this time she can’t finish the sentence,_ Ginny thought in satisfaction, and bit down. Luna arched at once, the cords in her neck standing out taut. And then Ginny slid her gently to the floor, and slid down from the chair, in return, to join her.

Luna was writhing, so fast and so slippery that Ginny had a hard time hanging onto her at first. But she found the right way to do it, buttons on her shirt and hand beneath her skirt, and even undid the shirt and slid it away from her breasts because Luna slowed down enough to let her.

“You’re wonderful,” Luna said breathlessly, eyes shut.

Ginny’s eyes were on her skin, so pale that it was hard to bear. She stretched out one hand and slowly stroked the delicate tautness over Luna’s ribs. Then she moved on to her left breast, and her left nipple, and her collarbone.

Every touch brought a noise from Luna, as delicate as her skin.

Ginny sat back, but only long enough to unbutton her own shirt, her fingers shaking so hard with lust that she finally tore it loose. Luna’s noises were tearing at her worse. She flopped straight down onto Luna, chest to chest, and pressed herself as deep and merciless as she could.

Luna made a guttural noise that Ginny would have associated with one of her magical creatures long before _Luna_. Her hand came down in the middle of Ginny’s back, holding her there, as they rocked and slid, breast to breast, and then Ginny bent down and blew gentle, hot breath over the place on her collarbone that she’d already touched.

Luna opened wide, staring eyes, and reached down to tear at their trousers.

Ginny laughed softly and rolled back, able to be more comfortable, even calm, as she pulled them away. _I know what we’re going to do._ She met Luna’s gaze and smiled a little at the amount of heat in it. _I know who I’m going to be with._

Getting off the trousers didn’t seem to take as much time as the shirts, for all that Ginny had to writhe and shimmy to remove them, and do the same thing with Luna’s hips. And then she tugged off the simple undergarments Luna wore and slid her fingers straight in.

Luna’s legs clamped around her hand, her breath fast and rushing, nearly upset. Ginny held her gaze and waited, patiently, one finger slowly smoothing over the surface of the flesh she was touching.

Luna finally nodded, and Ginny bent over and kissed her again, then slid her fingers in and slowly widened them.

She crouched down, making Luna writhe and buck again, and gazed up at her, flushed face and wide-spread golden hair and all. It was enough. Ginny closed her eyes and delicately touched her tongue to the pink-red skin in front of her in a long lick.

“ _Ginny_!”

She was too busy to listen for long. Luna was snatching at her hair and the floor and the legs of the table, scrabbling, unable to deal with the sensations cascading through her. Ginny knew she was causing them, and she reached up and stoked the inside of Luna’s thighs as she lapped and lapped and lapped.

She’d been dreaming of doing this for so long, _she_ was probably going to come before Luna ever touched her.

Luna was shimmering with wetness, her own and Ginny’s tongue, by the time she abruptly reached down and grabbed Ginny’s head and pulled her away. Ginny tried to make a muffled noise of protest, but it came out more like a squall once she didn’t actually have Luna’s sex in front of her. She shook her head and stared as Luna spun Ginny over her hips and down to the floor again, with strength Ginny had only seen before when she was getting out of the way of a charging Nundu.

“How did you—”

Luna turned and sealed their mouths together, breathing through her nose so harshly that she sounded as if she’d been scrambling away from that same Nundu. Then _her_ fingers were at work, slipping down to make Ginny writhe and nearly collapse, then spread her legs wide. Luna made a soft noise that could have been more of the same she’d been making, or a new one.

“Together,” Luna said. Ginny stared at her, not sure what she meant. Luna huffed and grabbed and spun her again, pulling Ginny’s legs and arse towards her mouth, and lowering her head. At the same time, she was cocking her hips, or shimmying, or something, so that Ginny’s mouth was more easily positioned, pointing towards where she wanted it.

“Oh. Right,” Ginny muttered, and felt a little stupid about it. It would be better if they were together. Right.

Still, she didn’t think it was that easy by the time Luna’s tongue slipped inside _her_. She jumped, and smacked her nose on Luna’s pelvis. Luna laughed—there was no mistaking that noise even with her mouth busily at work—and trailed her fingernails up Ginny’s thigh in a tease.

Well, Ginny was going to show _her_. Or them. Or herself. She went back to work, and carefully brought her fingers into play when she could, when she was sure that she wasn’t going to scratch Luna.

The pleasure that spiraled through her was incredible, and twinned. Of course there was what Luna gave her, the shocks that jumped up from her groin and flooded her chest, the writhing she couldn’t help, the way she kept hunching her hips and thrusting involuntarily…

But knowing she was doing it to Luna, too, and that Luna wanted her to be here and doing it, filled her with an enormous sense of smug satisfaction that lightened her as if she was on a Firebolt.

The sensations collided and started to spin, working their way up towards the center of her chest, her breastbone. Ginny shivered more than a little, and knew what would happen when they got there, when they met.

They did. She came, and jammed her face forwards and held Luna in place with her legs on either side of her head, shuddering. God, that was _good_ , the pleasure ripping and raking her from the inside, the—

Luna almost hurt her tongue with how she came in response, and Ginny, jolted out of her own selfishness, licked harder, until Luna made a noise that was more pained than longing. Ginny pulled back slowly, the trembles of her own passing orgasm leaving her feeling slow. The blink she gave Luna seemed to take an extraordinary amount of time.

On the other hand, the smile that Luna gave in response was swift. She reached out and traced the path of an imaginary tear down the side of Ginny's cheek. "I think all the Writhing Snakes you had are gone," she said happily.

"That's...good," Ginny said, her voice stretching like sap.

"It is," said Luna, in a voice that not only didn't admit any doubt, it gave doubt no ability to knock, and then she rolled over and snuggled hard against Ginny. Ginny didn't find it the most comfortable position, especially with how firmly Luna was holding her, but it didn't matter. She was asleep before any thoughts about floorboards or how her neck would feel in the morning could occur to her.


	6. The Camelopard Sacrifice

No matter how much they ate, Ginny thought, she never felt satisfied. Luna had made porridge and brought out fruit to put on it, and then toast and brought out marmalade and butter, and then scones, and then heavy dripping biscuits, and then sausages, and then a concoction of whipped cream that Ginny thought she’d probably been saving for pudding some other meal.

It didn’t matter. What they really wanted, what would _really_ satisfy her, was an arm’s length away, but they didn’t have time to indulge in each other again before they returned to the Ministry. Ginny pouted about it, and didn’t care who saw.

 _Well, here there’s only me and Luna to see,_ she finally admitted, after the third time Luna caught her eye and gave her a delighted, mysterious smile.

“You look so much happier than you did yesterday. Did you throw salt out the window for the Whooping Herons when I wasn’t looking?”

Ginny laughed and put down her cup of coffee. They’d already gone through tea and pumpkin juice. “No. Just…knowing that you like me back makes me feel like I didn’t spend all that time loving and longing for you in vain.”

For a moment, she thought she might have said something wrong, because pink rushed down Luna’s face and her smile vanished. But the next second, it became obvious the first smile had only melted so something much stronger and more wonderful could replace it.

Luna reached out and gently slid her hand through Ginny’s hair, watching as Ginny closed her eyes and shivered luxuriously in the wake of the touch. “Your love and longing could never be in vain.”

“That’s easy to say now,” Ginny whispered, keeping her eyes closed. In fact, she didn’t want to sound as if she was too needy and drive Luna away.

“Stop that.” Luna patted her cheek in what was only not a slap because Ginny trusted Luna never to do that to her. Ginny opened her eyes and blinked.

“Stop what?”

“That ridiculous brooding on the past. It’ll fill your stomach with even _more_ Writhing Snakes than you got last time. We’re together now. You took the risk and you got something for it. And I know that I won’t lose you to a spell or an Auror case that you took on when you shouldn’t have. So relax.”

Ginny nodded slowly, eyes locked on Luna’s. She didn’t have to know what Writhing Snakes were—as she still didn’t—to realize that Luna was right. And _Luna_ must be feeling relieved, too, given that she had apparently been worrying about Ginny and trying to get her attention for years.

 _Just not the way anyone except Luna would have tried to get my attention,_ Ginny thought with a fond smile, and sipped at her tea again. “What are we going to do about the camelopard case, since you don’t want me using my spells again?” she asked.

“That’s simple enough,” Luna said, and set about emptying a packet of sugar into a cup. Well, no, it was more like a little jar, since it had a lid. Ginny sat back and raised an eyebrow, but Luna never looked up from emptying that sugar, in that absorbed way she had.

 _Well, and she wouldn’t be Luna if she didn’t do things like that,_ Ginny had to admit. This time, she waited until Luna looked up from her absorbed task to repeat the question. “What are we going to do?”

“Lure the camelopard to us,” Luna said, and leaned over the little clay jar. “After I cry in here. They love tears mixed with sugar.”

Ginny opened her mouth, then closed it again. She had asked, and Luna had told her. Now she would sit back and await results.

*

“But this doesn’t tell us anything about who the camelopard used to be, does it?”

“Doesn’t it?” Luna stopped in front of Ginny, tilting her head back. They were a street away from the house where Rosa Lestrange had died, and Ginny had to admire the sheen of Luna’s hair against the back of her neck for a moment. _Had_ to; the way it shone snared her attention and wouldn’t let it go. “I think we’ll find it easily enough.”

“If you do,” Ginny acknowledged with a faint nod. Trusting Luna was restful in some ways. She no longer had to worry about Auror politics and whether she would offend someone or break some law she hadn’t known about. She only had to watch Luna as she opened the lid of the little jar and scattered the sugar, clotted with tears, on the ground.

“Now what do we do?” Ginny asked, wrinkling her nose a little as Luna added something else to the mess of sugar on the ground. It was the juice of a large purple fruit that smelled so strongly Ginny could have fainted if she was locked in a room with it.

“Now we wait.” Luna raised a barrier spell, a green one Ginny had never seen before, with a casual wave of her wand, and settled back on her heels.

“I think you’ve been inventing your own spells,” Ginny muttered, and sat down on the pavement beside her.

“I have not.” Luna looked honestly shocked, her eyes so wide that Ginny could look through them to the back of her skull.

“Then where did you get this spell?” Ginny knocked her knuckles against the barrier that stretched in front of them, gleaming so green and slick that it looked as if it was made of solidified ice.

“I found it. In a book.” Ginny still stared, and Luna finally bowed her head and admitted, “A book that I found in a ruin guarded by magical cobras at the bottom of a jungle in Wales.”

“There _aren’t_ any jungles in Wales.”

“That’s because you don’t know where to look to find them. You have to turn sideways and step out of the world…”

Ginny chuckled in disbelief and joy, leaning her forehead against the barrier. “I’m going to have all sorts of fun learning from you. And if you want to learn any of the spells that I know, all you have to do is ask.”

“I want to know something else,” said Luna, her eyes solemn and wide and shimmering. “Why did you spend so much time dancing around me and not going after another woman when you thought I would never respond? I never even knew you liked women. I thought you would go back to hanging around with Wrackspurts.”

“I didn’t know that Wrackspurts distinguished between men and women,” said Ginny gently, while her stomach filled with what Luna would probably say were Writhing Snakes.

“Well, in this case, the man I expected you to date was so filled with Wrackspurts that I think it’s the same thing as dating them,” said Luna, shaking her shoulders and settling her hair. She checked over the barrier, and Ginny did the same thing, suddenly wondering if they were making enough noise to let the camelopard sneak up on them.

“Nothing can hear us or smell us past this barrier,” said Luna soothingly. “Even Muggle vehicles would drive right through us.”

Well, that might be true, but it wasn’t something Ginny was in a rush to experience, even so. “You mean Harry, don’t you? He has Wrackspurts all over him? But I thought you liked Harry.”

“That has nothing to do with Wrackspurts.”

Ginny nodded in acknowledgment. “Well, Mum wants me to date Harry, and sometimes he acts like he wants it, too. But I’ve known for years that I liked women, and I wanted to date you. Not him.”

“Then you have to tell him.”

“I know.” Ginny sighed. “But honestly, he went so long without glancing at me that I don’t think he’s the main one I have to worry about. That’s Mum. She hasn’t given up the idea of Potter grandchildren someday.”

“Why does she want them so much?”

“She talks about every woman wanting to watch her daughter having children.” Ginny gave another glance over the barrier, but as yet, there was no camelopard creeping close to sniff at the sugar. “I don’t know. She has lots of grandchildren already. Maybe she would be less upset about me not wanting them if she’d had another daughter and that daughter got married.”

“Lots of mothers don’t get to watch their daughters have children. Mine didn’t.”

Ginny caught her breath. She’d been thoughtless. She reached out. “Luna…”

“She was here while she was here,” Luna said, and touched the inside of Ginny’s wrist with gentle fingers, not glancing away from the barrier. “I think you’ll want to be quiet, even though this prevents sounds from getting past it. The camelopard is here, too.”

There was no reason for those words to make freezing water run through Ginny’s blood. She turned around clumsily on her knees, and then remembered that she was trying to be _silent_. But still, she could only stare as the camelopard came slowly towards them.

It was a great, clumsy beast, heavy bovine and slinking spotted leopard both at once, sniffing the air as though it could sense something besides the sugar. It glanced around and made the horns gleam. Squinting, Ginny thought she could see a hint of transparency already outlining its shoulders.

_Luna’s right. They don’t last long._

But it was at least solid enough to leave a crunching trail of gravel behind it as it lumbered up to the barrier and lowered its head to lick up the sugar.

Luna waited until the sugar was gone and the beast was sniffing the ground for grains. Then she stood up and stepped past the barrier, her expression mild and unyielding.

 _"Luna_ ," Ginny moaned softly, scrambling out of the trap and after her. The camelopard had lifted its head and simply frozen. It didn't seem to know what to do about a human willingly moving towards it.

But any second it was going to decide, and Ginny wasn't leaving Luna out there with it while it did.

The camelopard's lips pulled back and revealed its teeth. Its head was already starting to lower, the hooves and paws scraping at the ground. Luna halted, but more as if it was blocking her way forwards than because she was afraid. Ginny hurried up beside her.

"Rolanda," said Luna softly.

The camelopard went absolutely still, as if Luna had cast an ultra-powerful Freezing Charm on it. Ginny stared. Then she aimed her wand carefully at the camelopard, deciding this was Luna's way of distracting it.

Luna reached out and stopped Ginny with one hand on her arm. "Don't cast at her," she said. "It's not her fault that someone found her and sacrificed her. She was Rolanda Lestrange, the third sister of Rosa and Romula."

"How did you know that?" Ginny couldn't think of anything in the investigation that would have even hinted at that to Luna. Unless she had used one of the spells she had scolded Ginny for using, of course.

"I didn't until I got right here. But it makes sense, doesn't it? The camelopard attack on them, specifically, when they'd been in hiding since the war and not caused any great trouble?" Luna turned back to the camelopard, and Ginny started. It had actually almost been possible, scarily easy, to forget about the beast crouched in front of them. "Who else would it be?"

"So you used the name as a distraction not knowing it was her?"

"Yes." Luna gave Ginny a confused glance.

Ginny opened her mouth, then sighed and closed it. It would take too much time to complain about Luna's hypocrisy, and she probably wouldn't understand it anyway. "Now that we know who she was," she said, looking at the camelopard and trying in vain to see any trace of a female human in its body, "what do we do with her?"

"You know she won't survive for very long?" Luna asked softly, running a hand up to the fur between the camelopard's horns. The camelopard stared at her as if it couldn't believe Luna had done that. Ginny knew how it felt. _She_ couldn't believe Luna had done that. "Camelopards dissolve into magic. Always. That's the way it happens."

"I know."

"There's not much we can do for her." Luna's eyes were fiercely sad, and more alert than Ginny had seen them when they were making love. "We can take her to a place that might make her happy for the time she has left, though."

"You don't think the Aurors will insist on us bringing her in because of the murders she committed?"

"What justice would they serve up? What do they do even to vampires and werewolves who end up killing someone, even if it's accidental?"

Ginny winced and nodded. She understood what Luna meant. That the camelopard had been a human being sacrificed and twisted by other human beings wouldn't matter to the Aurors. They would only think that was more reason to destroy the camelopard even before she dissolved, so that she couldn't take her rage and pain out on someone else.

_And listen to me. I'm even thinking of the camelopard as "her" now, even though I still can't see anything human in her._

"I don't know if I'm going to work with Aurors anymore," Ginny said, while Luna poured more crystallized, tear-laden sugar on her hand and held it out to the camelopard. "I don't--well, I'll take a holiday, anyway. Sometimes it's the right thing to do, to go to them. This time, it wouldn't be."

Luna smiled at her and scratched the camelopard's horn. "Who's a good Rolanda?" she cooed at her. "Does the good Rolanda want to come with Luna and see where I think she'll be happy in her last days?"

 _There are plenty of people who would still say she's mad,_ Ginny thought as she followed Luna and the camelopard, step by step, towards the Apparition point. _But God, look at her. I wouldn't want her any other way._

*

Luna Apparated them all--even holding onto the camelopard, which Ginny honestly hadn't been sure would work--to a large grassy field with muddy ruts in it, and trees, and no trace of a human building. Ginny looked around curiously. She didn't know where it was, but she could feel the camelopard lift her head and sniff the air.

"This is a place without humans," Luna said, stroking the camelopard's side this time. The beast was too interested in sniffing to pay attention. "This is a place while no one will hunt you while you wait for your--end."

The way her voice thickened told Ginny how hard it was for her to say that, but the camelopard didn't seem to be paying any attention. Maybe she only responded to tones of voice and certain words, Ginny thought, like any animal.

Delicately, she pranced away from them, moving awkwardly on her combined hooves and paws. She sniffed the air again. Then she lowered her head and began to crop the grass as though she was starving.

"I thought they didn't really eat," Ginny mutter.

Luna leaned her shoulder against Ginny's. "She was driven mad by the presence of humans. Because she was a sacrificed human, of course. I should have thought of that before." Luna shook her head in what looked like disbelief. "Ordinary camelopards can be driven mad by certain things that were around when they came to be. It's no wonder she was attacking."

"But we're here, and we're human."

"Listen to the air, Ginny." Luna cupped her hand under Ginny's chin. "Listen to the wind."

Ginny tried, although she didn't know what she was listening for, and the sharp _crunch_ of the camelopard's flat teeth chewing grass interrupted her anyway. But she started to hear what Luna was talking about. There was so little wind stirring in the field that it seemed as if the air was heavier and purer. And then she began to feel as if a noise was missing that had been present so long she had stopped hearing it.

"There's something--missing?" She hated that she sounded so uncertain.

"The presence of humans. Our magic." Luna sighed and leaned on Ginny, swaying her arm back and forth as if it were a swinging door. "No one casts here. I found it by accident when I was following a Blithering Humdinger. You can Apparate in, and you can bring in objects like our wands that are magical, but it just negates any spells."

Ginny closed her eyes and sighed a little, head tipping back. "It's so _peaceful._ "

"It is at that," Luna said, and together they stood and watched the camelopard crunching grass, moving further and further away. Her hooves and paws worked together now, Ginny thought, instead of apart. She might make a lumbering figure that looked sort of silly against the green of the grass, but she was no longer unnatural.

"What do you think is going to happen to her?" Ginny finally murmured. "Will she break free and attack people again?"

Luna's hair shimmered in the sunlight as it fell down against her shoulders. "No. I really don't think so," she added, maybe because Ginny could feel herself looking less than reassured. "She's at peace here, and her sisters are gone, one way or the other. She won't have any vengeance to seek out."

Ginny leaned more heavily on Luna, and said, "I would like to come back here some time. Just the two of us."

"Of course we can," Luna said, and let her hair slide over Ginny's ear. "Just us and the flowers and the grass and the Reverse Sylphs."

Ginny smiled.

*

"You did _what_ with a murdering beast?"

"Relocated it to a place where it won't bother anyone anymore," Ginny said easily. She supposed that the Deputy Head Auror, a huge man named Silvan who looked like a walking wall, could intimidate most people he interacted with. But Ginny wasn't an Auror, and she didn't answer to him. "The way that often happens with dangerous animals."

"This one _murdered_ people."

"And it was made from a human sacrifice. Rolanda Lestrange." Ginny stared into his eyes as she laid the file of information on Rolanda down on the desk. Once she'd started investigating, it honestly wasn't hard to find. Luna had started her in the right direction with the name. "I believe blood feud law allows striking back in cases like that?"

"What would _you_ know about blood feud law?"

Ginny gave him a thin smile, because she knew what lay behind the question. Silvan wasn't one of those pure-bloods prejudiced against Muggleborns, but he was one of the ones who prided himself on knowing the laws no one used anymore, the greetings dead a century ago, the reasons for the goblin wars. She was a Weasley who didn't fit his picture of the "right" person to know things like that. "Enough to make a living with it in my cases, and understand when it impacts them. In this case, Rosa and Romula Lestrange committed a crime against a member of their own family. If it's not fatal, the family member who suffered the injury is permitted to avenge themselves. The Aurors stop in only when the victim is dead. Isn't that _right_ , Auror Silvan?"

He stared at her, huffing, his arms folded. Then he said, "Get out."

 _Gladly._ But Ginny didn't say it, because even if she had decided to step back on working with the Aurors, she might want to again someday, when she could do more for justice and less with the spells that made Luna so worried. She bowed to Auror Silvan, just to increase his fury, and left.

Luna was waiting for her at home.

But there were two more people Ginny had to talk to before she could go back and see her again. Luna had made it a condition.

A sensible one, Ginny had to admit.

*

“Ginny? Are you all right? Is that dangerous case you were on over with?”

“Hi, Mum.” Ginny brushed soot off her robes and turned to face her mother. Mum’s face was seamed with such weariness that Ginny wanted to take her in her arms and hug her.

And why shouldn’t she do that, if she wanted to?

Molly clucked a bit as Ginny hugged her, but she was smiling when she pulled back and brushed a few strands of hair from Ginny’s eyes. “You’re safe? You don’t have to worry about someone chasing you or trying to kill you?”

“Not right now. Luna and I figured out what was going on with the case, and it’s solved now.” Ginny nodded to the dining room table. Remarkably, it really did seem as if her mum was alone in the house. Not even a tumble of grandchildren to take care of. “I have something to talk to you about, though. Is that okay?”

“Of course.” Molly still seemed vaguely disturbed as she took a seat at the table, though, and kept studying Ginny anxiously, as if she thought it was bad news. Good news didn’t usually take a special visit and a hug.

From her perspective, it probably was. Ginny sat across from her and said, gently, clearly, “Mum, I’m not ever going to have children.”

Molly’s breath caught, and for a second Ginny thought her eyes would fill with tears. But then she shook her head stubbornly, and said, “You can’t really mean that, Ginny. Not _really_. You just mean that you haven’t found the right man yet. And how can you, when you haven’t even started looking?” She leaned across the table and playfully slapped Ginny’s arm.

“I mean it, Mum. No children. No marrying Harry.” Ginny hesitated, weighing up the words, and decided to say them, for the same reason she hadn’t tried to soften what she’d already said. There was too much chance her mother might misunderstand. “No man.”

“What—what do you mean? You can’t mean that you want to stay alone the rest of your life.”

“No. I already have someone. I found Luna through this case, and I found out she wants me, too, and I’m not ever going to let her go.”

Molly stared at her as though she’d started breathing fire. Then she said, “Luna’s a nice girl, of course, but she can’t marry you.”

“Not in the way Bill and Fleur did. But I’ve been looking through some of the ancient customs, and I found one Luna likes, and she and I are going to be married that way come summer.” Ginny snorted a little. She’d thought she would have to wait a long time before she could propose _anything_ like marriage, but Luna had walked up to her with the book that morning. “We’d like you to come.”

“This—this can’t be true, Ginny. You’re so _young_.”

Ginny couldn’t help it; she rolled her eyes. “Old enough to marry a man, but not a woman? Luna’s the same age as I am, you know.”

“I mean—you’re too young to decide that you want to be bound in the ancient ways to a woman, when you might change your mind and start wanting a man and children tomorrow. A binding in the ancient ways can never be broken, you _know_ that.”

“That’s one of the attractive things about it for Luna and me.”

“Ginny—you _can’t_. I always looked forward to your children so much, and—”

“I’m not going to have them,” Ginny said, and took her mother’s hand. “Ultimately, Mum, and please—I’m not trying to hurt you. I love you. But this is my choice, my life. Not yours.”

Molly sat still for so long Ginny wasn’t sure _what_ she was going to say next. But then she turned away and put her head down and began to sob.

Ginny stood up and went around the table and held her. It felt so familiar, if strange at the same time. She had only done this once before for her mother, after Fred died, but her mother had done it for her so often.

At last, Molly’s sniffles and sobs and gulps died down to silence. She rubbed at her face and then turned and touched Ginny’s shoulder as if she was made of ice and Molly might melt her with her heat. “I only want to know that you’ve really _thought_ about this,” she whispered. “That you won’t change your mind tomorrow and want marriage and children.”

“I never have. Maybe that doesn’t reassure you, but it’s the truth, Mum.”

Molly sat for a long time as if listening, and then sighed. “Yes, I can feel it. It’s the truth.” She sighed and then flung her arms around Ginny and hung on for so long Ginny gasped. “Only promise me that you’ll think long and hard about bonding in the ancient ways before you do it. It’s irrevocable.”

Ginny managed to smile. “One nice of part of the rituals that Luna wants to use is that you have to wait and meditate on them, and you have to take a long time to set them up, too. So we’ll have at least a year before anything has to happen.”

“Thank you,” Molly whispered.

Ginny knew she was probably only thanking her for the length of time, and she might still think Ginny would change her mind in the interim, or that Luna would. But Mum was still her mum and Ginny loved her, so she chose to interpret it also as thanks for telling her the truth.

_She’ll get used to it in time. She’s strong. She can become used to so many things, and maybe eventually happy for me._

And that left only one person Ginny had to confront.

*

“Gin? Have you—I mean, how are you?”

 _Have you finally decided to come on a date with me?_ Even though Harry had cut the question off, Ginny knew that was what he was about to ask.

“No.” With Harry, like Mum, Ginny saw no point in not being clear and direct. Besides, she didn’t believe that Harry’s dream had ever been to marry her. She dusted some more soot off her robes and spoke without moving away from the fireplace. “I’m going to marry a woman. I’m a lesbian, Harry. Not into men. I can’t date you.”

Harry stared, and stared. Ginny almost thought she could leave and it would end there. But Luna had insisted that she got some confirmation that people understood before she left, so she remained.

She didn’t expect Harry to spin away from her and kick the leg of one of the chairs. Ginny winced. They were heavy mahogany, like almost all the furniture Harry had bought after the war. He’d said he wanted something that would last.

“Harry?”

“I want a family. And children. And you were my best chance.”

Ginny tried to think about and understand that, but then indignation rushed through her and she narrowed her eyes. “Are you seriously implying that you were going to ask me on a date because you were too lazy to go and find anyone else?”

Harry glared back. “Not lazy! Just, I know you best and you’re always around and I thought you liked me, so…”

“That’s called laziness, Harry. You aren’t even in love with me, are you?”

“I want children.” Harry spoke so softly she could hardly hear him over the flames crackling behind her. “I always have. And I’ve gone long enough without them.”

“Then you can find yourself someone who wants to have them,” Ginny replied. He jumped as if her words were a rap on the knuckles. “Someone you love and who loves you in return. I love someone else. I wouldn’t be a good wife for you even if I liked men and wanted children.”

Harry only looked at her with sad eyes. “Where am I supposed to find someone else who loves me for me instead of what my money can buy her?”

“You’ll have to look.” Honestly, that was part of the problem with this whole _arrangement_ in her mother’s head where they got married and had kids, Ginny thought. It was convenient for everyone except her, maybe, but it didn’t mean Harry cared about her or had any commitment to the idea. No wonder he had acted lukewarm about dating her. “You can find someone.”

“I don’t know that.”

Ginny shrugged. “Take a risk. You used to be good at those. I think you’re still good at those,” she had to add, thinking about some of the stories she’d heard from Harry in the last year. “You just didn’t want to take it with your family.”

Harry snapped his head up. “Children should _never_ be raised in a situation where they’ll be at risk.”

“They shouldn’t be raised in a loveless marriage that one of their parents decided on because he didn’t want go out looking, either,” Ginny said. “And you do have strong feelings on that subject. That means you have a lot stronger feelings than I do.” She softened her voice when she saw the look of absolute misery on his face. “You can find someone who wants them as much as you do and who will love you for you. I’m certain of it.”

“I don’t _know_ that.”

“You’ll have to look.” Ginny thought she had done all she could. If Harry didn’t understand by now that she wouldn’t date him, wouldn’t marry him, wouldn’t be the mother to his children, then he never would despite all she could say. “I’ll invite you to my bonding to please Mum, but I understand if you don’t want to be there.”

He only stood looking away. Ginny turned and took five steps back to the fireplace before he said, “Who is it?”

“Luna,” Ginny said, and the look of absolute astonishment on his face before the fire flared up around Ginny and claimed her indicated, to Ginny at least, that his healing had already started.

*

Luna came to meet her with a complicated weave of braided grass in her hands. Ginny leaned forwards to kiss her, being careful not to break apart the weave. “Hello,” she murmured, and tried to make the kiss as complicated.

Luna held up the grass like a shield, and Ginny stepped back. “How did it go?”

“Mum’s disappointed and tried to tell me I could change my mind, but she was more at ease when she realized how long this bonding in the ancient ways takes.” Ginny smiled at Luna’s smile. “And Harry is…he’s acting more disappointed than he actually is, I think. Because he wanted to marry me because I was there, and a friend who sees him the way he is, and convenient. Now that he knows he’ll have to look outside the Weasley family, maybe he’ll find someone he can really love.”

Luna stood there looking back at her, her face like a mirror filled with light. Ginny swallowed nervously. Maybe Luna had criteria she hadn’t met.

Then Luna sighed, and said, “It is well,” and flung the net of braided grass over Ginny’s head.

Ginny stared down at the net, and touched one of the stems. It was actually firmer than she’d thought, blades of grass so tightly wrapped together there seemed no beginning or end of the complex circles.

“To anchor you to your body. To keep you safe from the spells you use, and doubts. And camelopards.”

Ginny had to take Luna in her hands then, had to kiss her, and Luna melted against her without a protest. And the grass rustled softly between them, and reminded Ginny of the best thing:

She had chosen someone who thought in a different way, a unique way. But the _best_ way.

**The End.**


End file.
